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How to Customize Padlet Walls: Plus FREE Graphic Organizers!

Padlet is one of my favorite collaborative web tools to use with students that I have used for years. I love how versatile it is and how one can access a Padlet wall on laptops, Chromebooks, iPads and Android devices! If you are not familiar with Padlet then click HERE.

This week I helped a 5th grade class incorporate technology into their novel study groups. The teacher wanted to use Padlet for each team to gather ideas and brainstorm the events that they read about each day. I mentioned how anyone can MAKE a background for a Padlet wall to help students organize their digital sticky notes. She was so excited about this possibility! I whipped up these graphic organizers for the teacher to choose from each week and I wanted to share them with YOU:

We ended up making four different Padlet walls--one for each novel study group. Thank goodness for the remake feature that allowed us to quickly and easily make four different walls! Press the button once and BOOM the new board pops up in your dashboard.

Once the students worked together on their individual devices to add their ideas to the graphic organizer, the teacher printed the wall, deleted the post-its and uploaded a different graphic organizer for the next assignment. That way she didn't have to keep recreating 4 different walls each time. Honestly, creating a wall takes NO time and she may have spent more time deleting the post-its. However, this worked for her because she didn't have to print out different QR Codes to get to the new Padlet walls (for those who were using iPads) and didn't have to post new urls in her Google Classroom.

Note: We learned the hard way. The sticky notes will appear in different locations on the graphic organizers IF the students use different devices but work on the same board. Therefore, we had one group use iPads while the other three groups used their Chromebooks.

Here is a quick video tutorial I created to show how you can upload these graphic organizers to be the background of a Padlet wall:

Note: As I indicate in the video, you will most likely need to expand your browser window so the graphic organizer doesn't appear cut off.

I created these graphic organizers in PowerPoint and saved them as a jpeg. I did have to play with the formatting a bit. After a little trial and error, I finally had the size that fit perfectly on the Padlet wall. Give it a try!

Other ideas for customized Padlet wall activities include:

Having students label a diagram (parts of a cell, parts of a plant, layers of the Earth, maps, etc.)

What are some other ways we could customize Padlet activities for our students? Leave your ideas in the comments!

UPDATE: Since this post was written, Padlet has had a major facelift! If you are having trouble moving your sticky notes, go to the three dotted icon in the upper right hand corner and click Change Format. Select the green Canvas option. This will allow you to move the stickies anywhere on your screen.

If the graphic organizers are not fitting to your screen then you can try zooming out of your browser or dragging the corner of your browser until it comes through. Several people have contacted me about this issue and I have passed on the information to Padlet and hoping to hear back soon!

Hey Stephanie! Hum....let's see. We used Chrome the other day but I also tested these out with Safari and the Padlet app. I wonder if it would correct the issue if you zoomed out your browser (go to settings and Zoom then minimize the screen size)? Email me if that doesn't work and we can figure something else out :) contact@thetechieteacher.net

Hum....let's see. We used Chrome the other day but I also tested these out with Safari and the Padlet app. I wonder if it would correct the issue if you zoomed out your browser (go to settings and Zoom then minimize the screen size)? Email me if that doesn't work and we can figure something else out :) contact@thetechieteacher.net

Hi1I'm new to using Padlet. When I upload your tchart graphic organizer I can only see the black boxes and not the top with the colorful headings even when I go full screen. Can you please help me with what I may be doing wrong?Thanks!

I'm Julie, a lover of everything related to educational technology. One of my biggest passions is collaborating with and learning from others around the world. This blog was created to help give teachers techie ideas that promote creativity and innovation in their classrooms.